Current Advances in Genetic Resistance to Mastitis in Cattle and the development of sensors

Abstract

Bovine Mastitis is as an inflammatory condition of the mammary gland. During lactation Mastitis is one of the most common diseases affecting dairy cattle and the prevalence of mastitis in the lactating mothers is 3% to 33%.As Bovine mastitis is an infectious and multifactorial disease. The major pathological agents are the bacteria. Bovine mastitis reduces milk yield, increases culling rate, incur treatment cost, and may cause death of the animal in severe infection. Mastitis not only to a greater extent reduces the productivity but also affects the quantity and the quality of milk yield. Generally, as mastitis is the most infectious disease, the major factors that increases the chances of mastitis are microbial exposure, defense mechanism of cow, and environment and managemental factors. The resistance of Mastitis is a great matter of concern due to its impact, not only on the economy of milk production but also on the health status of the animal. To the consumers and society mastitis has become a concern because of problems about antimicrobial residues, antimicrobial resistance and milk quality. In recent years, the growing concern about functional traits in dairy production has fostered many studies on the background of genetically modulated variability in resistance to mastitis. Additionally, new tools became available for including respective outcome into dairy cattle breeding. Resistance to mastitis could be improved by breeding. The mastitis resistance involves several selection methods. Current breeding programs, use somatic cell count and clinical mastitis cases as resistance traits could prove useful in succeeding generations of cows to improve the natural genetic resistance, As mastitis is associated with inflammation and many such factors get released during the course of time. These factors can act as biomarkers for the diagnosis of this disease. Therefore by using the potential utility of these sensors many of the inflammatory factors can be measured. The quality and the quantity of the milk are affected by these inflammatory components. For the detection of CM many sensors can be used that will determine electrical conductivity, pH, Somatic cell count, Color and Homogeneity.

Therefore it has become a matter of greater concern to discuss the future direction of mastitis research, given the recent developments in the areas of dairy farming, dairy processing and societal concerns.